In his sleeve notes to 1978’s Music for Airports, Brian Eno wrote that ambient music “must be as ignorable as it is interesting”. That is true of The Ship, his first solo album in four years, which is inspired by the sinking of the Titanic and comprises two epic songs, one of which, Fickle Sun, is a three-movement piece featuring the comedian Peter Serafinowicz. The opener, the title track, is eerie and portentous, Eno’s impossibly deep spoken vocal perched atop synth washes that slowly unfurl. At 21 minutes long it could do with a trim, but the closing part, a cover of the Velvet Underground’s I’m Set Free, shows that Eno remains one of the great shape shifters.
